


soft

by grumpsy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hugs, John is an idiot, Love Confessions, M/M, Sherlock Needs A Hug, Yikes, good luck figuring out your emotions john you absolute dumbass, i love my stupid sons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 07:25:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15138116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumpsy/pseuds/grumpsy
Summary: “I love you.”The words were soft, hesitant, scanning the room in desperate search of purchase. His voice was barely above a whisper, the confession escaping as a hushed, monotonous hum. They sunk into the dark interior of the office, tightening the air around them, clutching to the noose around his neck and pulling ever so slightly.And there was ringing in John’s ears.





	soft

“I love you.”

 

The words were soft, hesitant, scanning the room in desperate search of purchase. His voice was barely above a whisper, the confession escaping as a hushed, monotonous hum. They sunk into the dark interior of the office, tightening the air around them, clutching to the noose around his neck and pulling ever so slightly.

 

And there was ringing in John’s ears.

 

Sherlock’s back was turned, bitten down nails and inky fingers clenching and unclenching against his scarred palms. His breathing had surpassed regulated, chest rising and falling unnaturally fast. He was scared - John didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that one out. Sherlock was scared. John was quiet.

 

He was facing a mirror, an old, murky, forgotten cheval glass, but the reflection was jarred and hollow. John had been watching: watching his eyes. The way they fell to the floor, as though incapable of maintaining a glance with the stranger mirrored.

 

John had been watching his mouth, watching the way his cupid-bow lips perfectly complimented the formation of ‘love’, how his expression returned vacant and impassive after the words were uttered.

 

Mary had said the words differently. Mary had been all smiles, lips clinging to vowels. She was confident, as though she knew the feeling was mutual. Perhaps she did; _it was_.

 

Sherlock didn’t know.

 

It was cold. And Mary was there, beside Sherlock, still not reflected in the mirror, never reflected in any mirror, wearing a grin, _that same old grin_ , the grin that said she knew, the grin that said to ask him. God, he missed her. He knew this image wasn’t her; her eyes were too pure a blue, hair too rich a blonde. It wasn’t her, but it was all the same, and it hurt.

 

It hurt, and it was cold, and the ringing was still there.

 

‘Tell him’, the look said. Kind eyes betrayed the soft simper playing on her lips. It reminded him he was still breathing, not quite living, but certainly surviving, without the need for words, not that anything she said would meet his ears regardless.

 

John wished they were back at Baker Street. He craved some familiarity amongst the chaos; he needed grounding. Because Sherlock was stood before him, within an arm’s reach yet too far away, and equally far too close, and John felt claustrophobic. And Mycroft was there, too, eyeing his brother, jaw lax, pupils wide, almost as stunned as John, himself; his focus soon changed to Watson, and John had never felt more trapped in his own skin, never more interrogated by a simple gaze.

 

It was quiet, impossibly quiet, and yet the room had never seemed louder.

 

Mycroft’s eyes said he knew: a soft, underlying fear simmering beneath painted composure. It was his hand - relaxed as it was tense, reaching towards him ever so slightly, almost undetectable - that whispered, begged, demanded.

 

‘Don’t hurt him’, the angle of the palm spoke, commanded, whilst the knuckles let slip the desire to keep his little brother safe.

 

John’s throat was as unreasonably dry as it was quiet.

 

The weight of his next action forced his shoulders to hunch, his hands to quiver beneath the overwhelming expectancy from those around him. He didn’t want to say, to admit, to believe. The words weren’t ready, weren’t formulated in his lungs yet - still growing and blooming like rose buds.

 

How was it, John wondered, that everyone else seemed to _know_ , when he, himself, wasn’t entirely sure. Mrs Hudson, Angelo, even Jim Moriarty, for God's-sake - how had they managed to deduce from a glance what he had yet to come to terms with after several years of internal conflict? It didn't make sense, not to John, yet, to others, it was as clear as differentiating the day and night, his emotions layered onto his aging complexion like a second skin - perhaps he’d seen this in his reflection, all the indications of a lovesick puppy, and learnt to ignore it.

 

John was good at that: at ignoring; came as naturally to him as breathing. As naturally as not meeting his own withered eyes in the mirror. As naturally as lying.

 

Sherlock should have seen, by now, should have attributed each feeling with the scars fading on John’s body, with the moles trailing up his arms. Sherlock Holmes was a genius; surely he’d have seen, have known.

 

But there he stood, back turned, posture working hard to feign nonchalance, unsure. Uncertainty danced on his pale features like a ballerina, tiptoeing around the faint freckles and accentuating pirouettes in the darkness beneath his eyes; he wasn't used to not knowing, to not trusting.

 

John saw fear in his friend's eyes.

 

And as John stood there, with Mary prompting and Mycroft trusting, he felt his resolve fall.

 

“How long?”

 

Sherlock was hesitant, unwilling, to reply, as though John would physically have to tempt an answer out of him. He was prepared; he’d learnt the divinity of patience when affronted with any member of the Holmes family, to cherish the rare moments of easy compliance.

 

Sherlock finally looked up, not quite at John’s cloudy reflection - at some point just north of his head; his expression contorted in a matter of seconds from perplexed, to indignant, settling on feigned placidity. John simply watched, baffled at the man’s curious emotions, rising and falling like waves. Watson found he was far out of his depths, treading water as the riptide grew stronger, stronger, stronger still; he was holding them both afloat, with Sherlock’s pliant frame forcing them to collectively struggle for air, as though they were sharing a single set of lungs.

 

It was okay, he thought, he was used to taking his sister to that tiny, little pool in Essex whenever mum and dad fought, keeping her afloat in more ways than one by teaching her backstroke. John knew how to swim.

 

Still, John found Sherlock was remaining quiet, unnervingly so, particularly for a man of his vernacular. Each moment, pronounced by the incessant ticking of the wall clock, punctured into his chest, and John’s leg was aching. It was a bruising, constant ache that left his upper thigh throbbing, knee practically _vibrating_.

 

_The case had been particularly strenuous,_ John reasoned, _he must have pulled a muscle running._

 

He’d learnt to reason against his better judgement in Afghanistan, in that tiny, compact medical tent where soldiers earned scars instead of medals. It was odd: he’d lost count of the number of men he’d still sought to save well after other doctors gave in; the amount of wounds he compressed with his bare hands; the number of nights he woke up in a cold sweat with the blood still staining his palms. John felt sick thinking about it, even now, even several years later - but he’d come face to face with death, could pinpoint hell’s coordinates on a map, and he’d watched both breath and light leave the corpse of a man he’d been joking with moments prior; they still echoed, ever present, in his nightmares.

 

By now, his leg was screaming, burning under his weight, threatening to give way. John fought to stay upright, forced himself to focus on the way Sherlock’s unruly hair curled at the nape of his neck, how his suit, which was easily worth more than double John’s monthly wages, was marked with mud on his lower left back. It was from the case. John was tired.

 

Sherlock’s lips were parted, as though answering in a silent sigh. He could feel it in the air, the desperate plea; _don't make me do this_. But John stood his ground - if they didn't get it out there now, they would never build up the guts to start this conversation over; it was now or never, now or nothing.

 

It had to be now.

 

John straightened his posture, _military stance_ , before clearing his throat as way of a prompt. Mycroft turned to him, turned on him, icy glare freezing John’s faux-confidence to the spot; _don't push him_ . But Mycroft didn't understand - he _had_ to push him, had to hold him out at the end of the waterfall until he spilt, perhaps more for John’s sanity than anything because, around Sherlock, Watson swore he was going mad.

 

_Maybe he liked mad_ , he thought quietly, contently, _maybe he could work with mad_.

 

The ringing was growing louder, closer, screaming into John’s ears like his former military leader, barking unheard commands that seemed to resonate deep in his being, deep in his psyche.

 

And so he pushed, and pushed, _and pushed_ , until he was truly convinced they would both fall off the end of the earth if he pushed them any further. They steadied themselves on the precipice, on the very edge of falling into nothingness or soaring into something eternal and obsolete - only one move, one word, and their fate would be decided. Rocks crumbled beneath their feet, tumbling into the all-encompassing void below without a second glance, as both his and Sherlock’s hearts beat out in morse code. John and Sherlock knew morse; they inhaled SOS signals and exhaled _dot dot, pause, dot dash dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot dash dot…_

 

It was cold at the end of the world. John fought off a shiver, fought off fear, imagining Sherlock’s Belstaff surrounding him, smothering him with smoke and ink and coffee and anything essentially _Sherlock_ . And John wanted to scream and sing all at once, and feel Sherlock in his lungs and taste him on his tongue and have his deep dulcet tones coursing through his veins. And he searched for a sign that never came, and waited for something, _anything_ , to happen - but he’d waited, and waited, for years upon years and somewhere along the road the waiting became _wanting_.

 

He wanted this more than he wanted air in his throat and blood in his heart.

 

And so, they faced the end of everything, the end of them, but equally the beginning, where everything was just shapes, and just noise, and just… _just._ Just existing for the sake of existing, and everything was just _something_ because that’s all it needed to be. Something and nothing and everything all the same. John and Sherlock could be something; John and Sherlock were something.

 

John pushed them further.

 

They were falling, falling, _falling_ , faster and faster, and John could feel the air smacking at his body, telling him to stay awake, to stay with it. And the voice was Mary’s. And the voice was Sherlock’s.

 

“Since 12:37 am on the 30th of January, 2010.”

 

John fought off an eye-roll at the analytical accuracy, as though this was the only information that mattered to Sherlock, as though the date was seared into his bones in the same way the bullet wound was John’s, but it soon sunk in. His senses were flooded, inundated with data detailing Sherlock’s tone, body language, phrasing - every way he knew how to read a person, every way Sherlock didn’t. _But that would mean..._

 

“We met on the 29th?” It was a question; why was it a question?

 

The silence that followed was confirmation.

 

John felt sick. Was he sick? Was he going to throw up? He performed an internal full body scan, desperate to find a logical, medical answer for the way his stomach had seemingly swapped places with his head. He had surmised that no, he wasn’t ill, but the way Mycroft was watching him without an ounce of self-control, without his usual military-like regulations made him question his diagnosis. He was just stood there, just watching, just, just, _just._

 

God, John wished he could _just_ , just live, just get by with justifying his existence with meaningless tasks like breathing and sleeping and just _being_ . He would never have that with Sherlock, never grow to see simplicities bore him; everything would always be fast to faster, always one thrill to the next. Hell, it already was like that; they were drowning themselves in cases after cases after cases _after cases…_ And John’s head was spinning, had been for a while, he supposed - since the 29th of January, 2010.

 

His mind was performing pirouettes in a long deserted ballet studio, with windows smashed in and light switch ripped from the wall; a room covered with earth that smelt and felt and _tasted_ like Afghanistan, and looked like betrayal, like death on foreign sand, like a cold-blooded murder celebrated with an award. Just like that, he was back in the action, spinning uncontrollably, facing grenade after grenade after machine gun fire after blood-curdling screaming after, after, after something, after anything, and John felt as though he’d been pushed underwater, with the water entering his veins through his ears and eyes and mouth as he yelled through yellowing lungs. John was forced to merely observe through glass, as bullets ricocheted off, striking his comrades with the accuracy of a sniper rifle. There was a numbness that spread from his left shoulder to his upper thigh, followed by a blinding pain, and it was all John could do not to cry out in agony as his winded body collapsed into the stained sand.

 

But as he found himself spinning, he found the sand beneath his beaten body contorting into concrete before his eyes, into pure London. Sherlock was there, standing just before the dusty mirror, towering over him as he toed the pavement. He was the only thing John could focus on; not the ache, not the trauma, not even the implications such an action held. The world was spinning off its axis, and, with a front row seat to watch the world end, John was set to spectate his own death, and yet Sherlock was all he could see.

 

Sherlock was the only damn thing keeping him grounded.

 

John stood with weary legs, dusting off dirt more out of habit than anything else before straightening himself. His breath echoed in his ears, striking him with a certain sense of urgency, of desperation; Sherlock must have heard it - his shoulders instinctively stiffened beneath his jacket, before being forced back down. Sherlock was telling himself to breathe; the way his chest was rising and falling was abnormal at best, strained and lacking any sense of rhythm. Channeling all he could of a false sense of calm, for the first time that night, albeit hesitantly, he turned towards John.

 

Everything ached under Sherlock’s heavy gaze. His eyes redefined John’s previous understanding of fear, despite his experiences, despite everything, it seemed. The war had thrived on a mutual sense of trepidation amongst men, a shared idea of what was right, and what was dutiful; he could see it in the faintest of lights in his fellow soldiers eyes, their terrified conscience, the only essence of individuality presented behind their brave plastic army man front, and John had watched that light dull, and John had watched that light die.

 

John had never seen such raw, unfiltered panic in his friend's eyes; when faced with his own death, Sherlock never withheld any ounce of complacency - he had an admirable way of forcing a complete disconnect, allowing his pupils to become waxy and unfocused, as though unphased with the prospect of dying. He was desensitised to such threats, John supposed, and yet, even after coming to terms with his unconventional way of living, with his abstract desire to be in danger, a gun held to his temple still caught John off guard.

 

But Sherlock was so… Seemed so…

 

And he was scared, like a deer in headlights, and far too in the moment to depersonalise, and far too tangled in his own mind to force the words out of his throat.

 

And slowly, Sherlock began to spin too.

 

The walls tumbled around them, blasted from their original positions like grenades against sandbags. Rubble struck their shins like embers spitting from an untamed flame, not quite catching cloth aflame, but certainly lighting their cells and bones and tissue alight. John was burning alive, with fire chasing the path of his blood like it was gasoline.

 

But Sherlock’s gaze was chilling him down to the bone, and yet striking his very skin ablaze with the feverous accuracy of a pyromaniac. He was just looking, but equally learning, like his software was updating and shifting and changing with every millisecond he spent analysing John’s face. It was not unfamiliar to be subject to Sherlock’s attention; he’d breathed the mystical charm his friend seeped from every pore as soon as he stepped foot in that lab all those years ago, how it seemed to manipulate his senses, drugging his mind, striking him as both thrilling and intrusive. And yet, above all else, being observed in such a manner, by such a man, was the very definition of intoxicating.

 

John was hit with enough passion to fill a crater in the moon; the urge to hold his friend was all-powerful and all-encompassing and overwhelmingly overwhelming. Holding wasn't enough. He didn't want to hold, to _just_ hold; he wanted to bury his head in the depths of Sherlock’s being, in the crook of his neck, and just breathe until his mind was opiated and hazy. Sherlock was a black hole.

 

He had a distinct dominance over John, established the first day they met, promising sickly sweet caresses with one hand whilst the other curled tight around his neck as though he had begged on his knees for it. It was slapping his face as though every cell beneath the skin directly linked through tangled ties to the strings of his heart, but praising him with enough sincerity to evoke him to forgive, soothing touches dancing down his neck as hair was tugged by fisted fingers, holding him tightly enough to bruise ribs. It was kisses tasting of blood, shared air containing shattered glass. Sherlock had power and, as much as John fought against it, he found himself pliant under his command.

 

And yet now, the power had been transferred, through a single submissive glance, and few whispered words. John’s mind was racing, thoughts tripping over themselves to reach the conclusion that had been dangling like bait before his very eyes for as long as he could remember:

 

Sherlock wanted too, and it was tearing him apart limb from limb.

 

The world stopped spinning.

 

Mary was holding his hand, her ghostly pale fingers clutching his palm without applying any pressure. John looked down, perplexed, flexing and unflexing against her long fingers and manicured nails, vaguely aware of the lump crawling up his throat.

 

He took a deep breath, just to remind himself that he could, and, with carefully calculated confidence, extended the same hand towards the man shivering just a few feet before him. It rested, testing the waters patiently, before growing more firm on Sherlock’s bicep; the muscle seemed to melt and contort under his hold, appearing to provide an equal level of comfort to settling into bedding after a long day of running and shooting and hiding and running and searching and finding and analysing and running and _working_.

 

John had touched his friend this way before, but never like _this_ \- never with implications of more jumping like sparks between them. It felt foreign, _forbidden_ , and yet the way their skin moulded into place came as naturally as pumping blood, with well-embedded instructions, following commands to sink into the grooves of the body.

 

Sherlock looked positively shocked, all wide eyes and parted lips, and John found he couldn’t stop himself from pulling the man into his arms. He held the man as he jumped at the touch, as he swallowed down the lump in his throat, as he breathed and he sniffed and his fingers felt blindly for him, and held him tighter as he clutched his arms and fisted the woollen jumper in his shaking hands. And through parted lips, Sherlock breathed, broken and afraid.

 

“John.”

 

“I’m here…”

 

“ _John.._.”

 

Breathing him in as though it would be his last chance, John threaded his fingers into his friend’s curls, willing himself to keep his chest rising and falling slowly despite Sherlock nuzzling into his neck. He fought back a shiver as Sherlock all but sighed, hot air tempting the hair on his neck to stand to attention as though they, themselves, were soldiers.

 

“I’ve got you,” he found himself promising vaguely, closing his eyes and swearing an oath to every God he didn’t believe in that _he had him_.

 

It didn’t make sense, John’s thoughts were knitted into some sort of woolly edged conclusion that _he had him_ , without any real indication as to what that statement really meant. It held elements of prayers, of hushed conversations at 5 am, of cases that resulted in hospital visits and broken bones and profuse bleeding and unspoken apologies and complaints and restrained, bare minimum touches. It meant more than he could comprehend, and less than he intended. It was a mid-ground; a stepping off point.

 

And it didn’t make sense.

 

So John tightened his grip, as if they’d both fall to pieces if he let him go. Two porcelain men, each fractured, each cracked in their own right, melding together into one misshapen, imperfect statue.

 

It was strange, unnatural, after half a decade of being deliberately limited to elbow brushes and brief shoulder pats, of being forced into the cookie cutter mould of a strictly platonic friendship, how easy it was to hold Sherlock like this. It was frightening, and it was new, and it was requited.

 

And as John succumbed to the touch, sinking into the gaps in Sherlock’s soul and setting up shop, he came to the underwhelming, abridged conclusion that _it would be what it would be_. The individual crashing tides in their minds would never quite be enough to placate one another; they would fight, and they would roar, and they would lose their voices trying to quiet one another. It was destined to fail, designed to self-destruct, and yet John was making a show of embodying the notion that he didn’t care.

 

They would see how it went, where it went, and let it play out. It would be what it would be.

 

He pulled back, cautious of the eyes on his neck, but allowed himself the privilege of resting his forehead against his taller counterpart. His hand rested on the scruff of Sherlock’s neck, feeling the heat rise there.

 

And John found his eyes had closed of their own accord, too cowardly to face Sherlock’s shrinking irises, afraid of what he’d find there instead. Their breath shuddered along with them.

 

Mycroft cleared his throat, by way of prompt, an unwelcome reminder that this case was still active, breathing down their necks; half of London was still in lockdown, Lestrade was still on the verge of bursting a blood vessel just outside that door, and they had places to be. John’s hand slipped naturally to Sherlock’s shoulder, squeezing it once for no other reason than to give his subconscious something to chew on, before he finally stepped away. He opened his eyes, allowing a moment for them to readjust to the sunless room. He didn’t miss the way his friend sucked in the air through his teeth as though it was his last chance to taste it before straightening his spine, as though an invisible string had tightened above him, a hand forcing his shoulders back like John’s dad used to do whenever he slouched at a family dinner. His pose, back straight and chest out, oozed confidence, whilst lips betrayed any ounce of.

 

There was a beat, a moment or two of silence where everything seemed feasible and realistic. A moment where John looked into the mirror and saw the bags under his eyes, and the split in his lips, and the bruise forming just below his eyebrow. And the dilution of his pupils that he should blame on the lighting

 

“Alright,” John said, apropos of nothing, chest thrumming with anticipation he hadn’t felt since that night in Angelo’s, since that static conversation by a sunset candlelight, “it’s all alright.”

 

“I know,” there was that trepidation again, that fear inching its way back behind a stoic mask.  

 

Sherlock rarely lied, rarely saw a point; lying was, ‘ _a tedious practice, John - a way to stave off the truth as though that’s to say it will never see the light of day; I_ always _find the facts, John, I’m drawn to them just as moths are to your hideous jumpers_ ’, (he’d said that weeks before he’d thrown himself off a building, and John had repeated it as a mantra whenever tabloids framed him as nothing more than a ‘ _fraudulent magician_ ’). Yet he was lying now, pathetically so.

 

John didn’t push; he’d pushed enough for one day.

 

“Ready to go solve a crime?”

 

“Oh God, yes.”


End file.
